Romance in Irony

Romance in Irony

Caslon Stork, part 1

Imagine, if you will, a man of middle age sitting alone on a park bench feeding pigeons stale bits of bread. A pretty cliche way to start a story, no? Now imagine the same middle age man, sitting on the same park bench, still feeding the same pigeons, but with enough C4 explosives under his sweater-vest to level the entire park and surrounding city scape. Caslon Stork has a god complex. 

You would think that with a name like Caslon Stork, he would have serious depressive issues, when in fact, this is not the case at all. he does not hate his family. Or humanity. Or his life. His father never beat him with a belt or a pillowcase full of bricks. He wasn't bullied in school for being the tubby little loser named Caslon Stork. Caslon Stork has a god complex. 

There is a certain rush to be had by walking around with a charged detonator in the pocket of your pressed slacks. The ability to choose between life and death for hundreds of living beings is enough to speed any pulse. This is not to say that the stale bits of bread that the pigeons were pecking up were soaked in cyanide. Not that he couldn't do that of course, but the bomb gave him enough excitement to leave the birds alive and cooing. 

His tubby fingers scoop around another hand full of crumbs that hit the paved path like the first drops of rain in a spring downpour. He watches the pigeons with calm eyes. His chest sweats against the plastic encasement of his control. 

Caslon Stork has no intention of detonating the bomb today. Or tomorrow. Or the next day. That is, until the hobo comes stumbling by. 

What is it about homelessness that causes people to walk around like the living dead? Are they lame due to malenurishment? Is gangrene devouring their toes? Are they just stoned, or drunk, or both? Anyway, this hobo is a particularly ugly example. The man hasn't had a shower in who knows how long. Nor a shave. Nor a visit to a dentist. 

He comes by, shaking his paper cup in the face of Caslon Stork, ruining his plastic serenity. 

"Help the homeless?" breathes, no, WHEEZES the bum. Caslon Stork smacks the cup from the mans greasy grasp.

"I have nothing for you here. Unless you want to lick the crumbs from the ground." The man gives a startled, baffled guffaw and stumbles away, now empty handed. 

Setting his brown paper sack full of crumbs on the bench next to him, Caslon Stork reaches into the pocket of his trousers and fondles the small but heavy detonation remote with idle determination. 

This was the day that Caslon Stork decided to flip the switch and press the button. 

My Head is a Jar

My head is a jar.

Every time something new slips between into my head, a little plink echos in my ears. You can't always see the thoughts clinking about because there are layers and layers of them. If you could see them all at once, my head would cease being a jar, and would instead be a double-sided picture frame. You know the kind. You buy one, thinking to show off your college football jersey, then go to hang it on the wall and realize it didn't fucking matter any way if you could see both sides or not at the same time. One way or another, something will have it's back to the wall. Two sheets of glass just make it more breakable.

My head does not hold pennies. It is not a penny jar, or even a nickel jar for that matter. It's more like a catch-all. Bits of paper, scraps from my day. Receipts, to-do's, maybe a tube of Burt's Bees. If I hear a song, a few chimes get tossed into the mix. Not enough to remember who sang the song, or even where you heard it, but enough to repeat over and over. Enough to catch yourself humming randomly. Enough to bug the piss out of you.

I think my head as a jar is a good thing. If you drop me on my head I'd break open like a penny jar though. Then I'd lose everything I have spent this long collecting. Gold and brown bits all over the floor. But until some asshole comes along and drops me right on my jar head, you can always add more. If my head gets too full, I can reach in and remove any of the old stupid things that have gathered. Like leaves in a fox hole. Crumbs in a utensil drawer.

I don't know if there is a lid or not for my head. I probably lost it a long time ago. I probably set it down somewhere when I was little and someone finally chose me to play kick-ball. You can't hold onto a lid for your head forever. Little kids are always leaving stuff behind. Stupid.

I like the way everything rustles together when I move. I can dance to an orchestra by just bopping my head. Shifting my weight. Almost-tripping. Every time I blink, or sigh, I get another plink. Nothing to see here folks. Just a girl with a jar for a head. Drop something in or leave it alone. Go shuffle your thoughts somewhere else.

When you crack an ice cube tray to get the ice cubes out, I think that's how my head might sound if you dropped me from a not-so-great distance. Like a spiderweb in safety glass. Gummy bits that don't necessarily fall out of the frame right a way. A shriek and a pop.

My jar-for-a-head does not get cold. Which I guess is good. They don't make hats for jars. Those glass bottles and cans and stuff have coolie-cups and all, but jars just don't seem to have any protection. Are jars easier to break in the winter? If a bug ever got into my head, I don't think it would matter if it were winter or fall. I'd smash my own head against the concrete until I shattered.

It's okay that my head is a jar. It really is. I am my own conversation starter. I am equally, if not more, as unique as you are. I amuse myself with my own hiccups. If you can hear the stuff rolling in my head, I can inspire movement by tilting slightly to the left, then back again.

What can your head do?

Purple Roaches in the Basement

Purple Roaches in the Basement

Right now there is a roach in my bathroom. Right in the middle of the floor. It is dead. It has been there for the last six weeks. Over the last six weeks, it has been the only living thing that has come into my life. But not the only dead thing. Not the only dead thing by far.

I killed the roach that now lies on my bathroom floor. I squished it with my bare foot. I was sitting on the toilet and it ran from the corner. A black streak over the white tiles. Not a care in the world. Until my foot came along and ruined everything. I stared at the smear on the floor for a long time. I don't know why I killed it. A primal act of savagery. Unconfined, uncontrolled.

The little blond girl came before the roach. Sweet silky hair and a purple sundress. Standing by the abandoned swing set. So easy to pluck an devour.

I kept expecting the roach to move. The little girl moved no matter how many times I squashed her tiny frame against the various parts of my anatomy. Roaches are crunchy. Little girls are supple and soft.

I used to read about murderers. Not the old man with a magnifying glass, wrinkled and hunched over a monarch he is pinning to a styrofoam plate. Good looking. Young guys. Sweater vests and carnage. Men who could sweet talk a woman to his web and slash the skin from her smiling face.

The little girls didn't start with sex. They started with the same savagery the roach started with. They scream so sweetly. Rebecca is the purple pixie buried now in the dirt floor of my basement. Forever in silt and sand.

That's all she said as I stabbed her. Stuck on repeat. Stuck on my blade, on my lap.

"My name is Rebecca. My name is Rebecca. My name..."

She escaped into her self. Screamed her own name while I sighed against her neck. Her last words were not words at all. Small whimpers and loose tears. I cried with her. At least I tried to cry. It's hard to feel anything other than cotton fabric. Plastic buttons. Satin bed spreads. Release. Repeat. 

I go to check on the roach. Still there, though a stream of ants has followed it from the corner. Hollowed out by tiny workers. Only the shell is left. Just like Rebecca.

My empty little Rebecca. The hollow bathroom and the filled basement floor. Full ants. Spent body. Uncontrolled. Unconfined. Time to rest. 

Gather Kids, I have a story or two to tell

Little Brother

Falling down the stairs was the best thing that could have happened to Nick before he was three years old. Mom had been working on laundry. Back then the washer and dryer were in a room in the basement in our old house. Nick and I were playing downstairs so she could keep an eye on us, but yet another load was dry and she decided to take them upstairs. I, being the eager-to-help daughter that I was, rushed up the stairs with her.

"Stay down here for just a second Nick," she said, "I'll be right back." We were upstairs for less that two minutes before I heard him screaming. 

"Mom, there's something wrong with Nick, he's crying." She had heard it too, and was already rushing back to the top of the stairs. He was holding his head in both hands. His face was red, and yet he seemed pale. His body was so small that his tears made him look even more fragile than the average three-year old. Screaming. I had never heard a more terrifying noise come from my baby brother, and to this day I have never heard anything that could match it. Thinking about it now makes me realize how much those cries haunt me. 

She flew down the stairs at a reckless speed, but luckily she didn't end up in a heap next to him on the basement floor. She scooped him up carefully and we took him straight to the emergency room.

Without the x-rays that followed over the next several hours, the doctors may never have found the cyst that had been growing in his brain, probably since birth. Hydrocephalus, meaning "water on the brain," is a condition in which cerebrospinal fluid collects in the ventricles of the brain. Huge amounts of pressure had been building in his tiny head until a surgeon went in and connected a straw-like shunt from the sac of fluid to his stomach.  

Before the age of five, he had had five complicated brain surgeries. I only remember bits and pieces from each. Every time mom told him he had to go back to the hospital, he cried. It pained us both to see his tears, but it couldn't be helped. I think it was number four of the five, but I remember him when his face was swollen so badly he couldn't open his eyes. Another when he was forced to lay on his stomach, crying softly because the spinal tap hurt so bad...  Maybe it was right after the fifth when we had to pull him around in a wagon, head still bandaged, for Halloween. 

Years later I learned more details than I ever wanted to know. Dad came so close to kidnapping him from the hospital. He didn't want to see his little boy put though that ring of hell anymore than the rest of us did. 

I remember the smell of the hospital. That disgusting astringent that always clings to your clothes after visiting. I guess it was good he was so young. Maybe these thoughts don't plague him the way they plague me. The only issue he seems to have is the ban my mom has put against him shaving his head in the summertime. 

Cannibals 

Always, it seems, that I am in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Before I could understand what was happening,

cannibals took me by the hand, and lead me to the table.

Dinner was served.

Everyone smiled at me, waiting for me to take the 

first bite. I looked at the plates neighboring my own.

Generous helpings for all.

Heaving at the thought of the mystery meat before me,

I swallowed a chunk, trying to taste it as little as possible.

Juices slid down my chin.

Killing chickens is unnecessary once someone dies of mysterious ailments. 

Lunch, I wondered, who did they have for lunch? 

Mentioning the run away from next door is a bad idea.

Never ask what happened to Uncle Dan.

Opting out of seconds, I excused myself and headed for the bathroom.

Puking in the toilet never felt so wonderful in my entire life.

Queer bits of brown and red fell from my lips as I evacuated my stomach. 

Running from the house, screaming like holy hell, would have been too embarrassing,

so I proceeded one step at a time, until freedom was mine and fresh air filled my lungs.

Tranquility was never my strong suit, but I fought for it like a madman. 

Unusual smells came from the sewer. I didn't mind.

Variance in thought was all that mattered. 

When I failed to return to the house, the 

youngest of my hosts,

Zane, was his name, came to my side, and asked me if I was ready for dessert. 

Mockery in a Headache

I had seen the unicorn sitting in the first row of the otherwise empty theater seats before my scene came up. The other kids proceeded though the rehearsal as if he wasn't there, and for all I know maybe he wasn't, but there he sat. His black tuxedo clashed against the brilliant white shimmer of his coat, and the top hat on his head hid the rainbow mane that I knew trailed from between his pointed ears down the center of his sloped back. I would have laughed at the monocle stationed over one cloud-colored eye if I hadn't known why he wore it so haughtily. 

His hind legs were folded awkwardly, one knee over the other. The tips of his front hooves were poised together in the typical stance of a chastising adult. He tried to make fun of mankind the way he thought I mocked the glory of unicorns. The white sweatsuit that encased my body left me sweat-slicked and itchy. The rainbow yarn stitched to my back was a swaying reminder of my resonating insolence. 

A singular shove from behind landed me in the spotlight. I kept trying to tell myself that all I had to do was skip over the wooden rainbow, prance through the cellophane river, and collect the red wax apples from the other side of the cardboard forest. Rainbow, river, forest. A fifty-foot trek through hell. 

I could feel the unicorn's eyes burning through the back of my sweatshirt. His gaze was boring it's way through me as I progressed one echoing step after another. Where were the business suit clad ferries? Where the fuck was the high heel wearing lawn gnome? Why was I the only one being tormented? 

With an apple gripped firmly in each hand, I dreaded what was to come next.  I stood like a deer caught in the blaze of steadily approaching headlights. Please god don't make me say it. Huge horse teeth caught a reflection of the stage lights as the unicorn smiled at me. No, it wasn't a smile at all. The beast leered at me. Someone started screaming. I looked around to see who I needed to tell to shut up before realizing the piteous wailing was coming from me. 

Concerned faces swam above me. I lay on the stage floor, staring up. I knew I had passed out before the first blurry figure stated as much. I'm lying on the floor after being mentally assaulted by a tux wearing unicorn, do you really think I need you to tell me that my six-year-old brain couldn't take the abuse any longer and finally offered me some peace by shutting down? Nu-uh. Didn't think so. 

By the time I got to my feet, the unicorn was gone. He knew he had won. I'd never say the line I had rehearsed for the last 6 weeks in the sanctity of my bedroom. Maybe I would overcome my fear of public speaking for the Christmas play. Bless us. Everyone... Then again, maybe not.